


Beautiful Day

by msred



Series: Puckleberry Shuffle [13]
Category: Glee
Genre: Evanberry friendship, F/M, Finchel break-up, Puckleberry Friendship, Saving Abel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 16:21:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cause it's a beautiful day/It's a beautiful sunrise/But I don’t want to see you cry"</p><p>He didn’t know what to say at first. He’d never seen Rachel like that before. He knew she cried. Everybody knew she cried. More than once he’d watched her stomp away from Finn toward the girls’ bathroom biting her lip. They’d all witnessed her disappearing act after the top 10 list was posted at Nationals the previous year, and they didn’t miss how her eyes were just a little redder than usual when she finally returned. But as far as he knew, no one, besides maybe Kurt, had ever actually seen her cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful Day

**‘Beautiful Day’ – Saving Abel {www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=nWtfDWibLwo}**

**_I started out today  
Thinking 'bout something else  
As you lay beside me  
It was a rude awakening  
As I wiped the sleep from my eyes_ **

Normally Puck hated waking up in the mornings. Sure, it was better than the alternative (ya know, _not_ waking up), but that moment when you realize you’re not sleeping anymore and you’re about to have to leave the warm blankets and the cozy pillows and – well, it just sucks, okay. But it was Saturday, and he was actually waking up on his own, as in his ma wasn’t breathing down his neck about getting up and getting ready for temple. That in itself was a near-miracle. And with his eyes still closed – there was still that sliver of hope that if he lay still for a few more minutes and _pretended_ to still be asleep, that sleep might actually come back – he could focus all his attention on listening, and there wasn’t so much as a peep or even the tiniest rustle from downstairs or from the direction of Sarah’s room. So one of two things was going on; either he was the first one in the house awake (unlikely) or Ma and Sarah had gone on to temple without him (damn near impossible). Either way, it was kind of a cool feeling. Between having a mom who worked random, unpredictable shifts and a 13-year-old sister with more friends than she needed, not to mention the barrage of his own friends who were constantly in and out of the place, he didn’t think he could even remember the last time he was in his own house in true peace and quiet.

He brought one hand to his face and scrubbed his fist over his eyes before reaching both feet toward the foot of the bed and lifting his arms over his head in a slow, full-body stretch. Only, as seemed to be the theme of the morning, he was met with a shock when only his right arm would actually move. The left one was weighted down and, come to think of it, still much more asleep than the rest of him. Without opening his eyes, he furrowed his brow, bringing his eyebrows together and causing deep creases to form in his forehead. The peacefulness of the morning was swept away as the previous night rushed back in, carrying with it an understanding of why no one had come to wake him up. Rolling onto his left side so that he could actually look at the tiny body he knew was occupying the other side of his bed, he opened his eyes for them to be met with a mass of dark waves splayed across one of his pillows.

He was kind of taken aback at how _natural_ she looked in his bed. Yeah, he liked to make jokes about pretty much everything being natural with them, given that they were ‘two good-looking Jews,’ but it was just that – a joke. Like nearly everything he did lately, it was just an attempt to get a smile out of her. Not that she didn’t smile – she smiled a lot more than she used to. She had actual friends now and the promise of NYADA in a few months; he just got this awesome _thing_ in his stomach whenever he was the one to make her smile. But all joking aside, other than the way she clung tightly to his hand even in her sleep, there were no traces of the trembling, broken girl who had practically cried herself asleep in his bed the night before. She looked peaceful there, serene even ( _shut up, her crazy-ass vocabulary was bound to rub off sooner or later_ ), lying on top of his sheets in a plain white t-shirt that hung on her shoulders and fell past her hips and a pair of cotton shorts he snatched from Sarah’s clean laundry pile (almost a five-year age difference and his little sister’s clothes fit Rachel almost perfectly – ridiculous, yet kind of awesome). The comforter was thrown almost to the floor and the sheets were tangled around their legs – everyone in the Puckerman house was used to sleeping alone and his mom tried to keep the electricity bill down by keeping the thermostat set as high as possible during warm weather, so it was no surprise that the extra body heat led them to ditch the covers. Still, with her body curled into a little ball and her shoulders rising and falling evenly, she looked perfectly comfortable lying with him.

**_But it's a beautiful day  
It's a beautiful sunrise  
I don't want to see you cry_ **

Puck was torn. Know what, scratch that. ‘Torn’ just didn’t cover it, cause that would imply that there was like, one thing he _wanted_ to do and one thing he _should_ do. But this, this was his brain doing some fucked-up three-way (and NOT the good kind). Like, there was the thing he really wanted to do but would probably be really bad, the thing he could settle for doing that was much less likely to get him slapped, or the thing that was definitely the right thing to do but that his body just didn’t seem to want to comply with. And he seriously had no fucking clue which part of his divided brain to listen to. Part of it wanted to let the rest of his body take the lead of his left arm and curl around Rachel’s perfectly tiny body. But then another part just knew that would be too much, and wanted instead to let his left hand keep holding hers – their fingers knotted together even if he couldn’t actually feel it – but keep the rest of his body on his own side of the bed, only letting his right hand cross the invisible line between them so that his fingers could brush softly through her hair – he knew she liked that. Finally, there was that part that had made him leave her alone on her bed the last time his mind and conscience had done this stupid dance, that asshole part of his brain that screamed that the smartest thing to do would be to just pull his arm from under her as gently as possible and roll off the bed altogether. He _hated_ that part, but he knew he could use some breathing room in the kitchen or something, and that way when she woke he wouldn’t be there to make her feel pressured or uncomfortable or anything else negative that he definitely didn’t want her feeling. She’d had enough negative lately, and the last thing he wanted was to get himself dumped into that category.

In the long run, it didn’t really matter what he thought. Because the sun had been rising for a while, and it had just broken over the line of trees behind his house so that these pink-orange rays of light slanted between his pulled-back curtains and through the window. And somehow, every damn one of those rays seemed to find Rachel. The light legit made her like, shimmer or something ( _not in that pansy-ass vampire way Sarah liked to go on about – chill_ ). Like, he always kind of had this urge to reach out and touch her hair, but in that light, it wasn’t an urge – it was a goddamn necessity. So he did. But it was a compromise. He didn’t bury his hand in it like he really wanted to; he settled for lifting the ends closest to him and letting them slide between his fingers. Her hair really was as soft as it looked. It’d been over a year since the last time he got his hands in it, and it was oddly comforting to know that hadn’t changed.

Puck lifted his head and pulled his hand quickly but carefully from her hair when he saw Rachel start to shift. It was almost imperceptible at first, but her legs twitched a little before her feet flexed and her toes curled under. Then her right hand, the one that wasn’t clutching his and buried half under her pillow, moved to her face to rub sleepily at her eyes. Her breath went from deep and even to startled, at first, then to shallow, and finally to hitchy. He didn’t like hitchy. Hitchy usually led to crying, and the last thing he wanted was for her to cry. There had been more than enough of that already.

“Rach?” He kept his voice low, a whisper really, just in case he was wrong and she wasn’t awake. If he happened to be wrong and she was still asleep ( _yeah, wishful thinking, whatever_ ), he wanted to keep it that way. While she was sleeping it was like everything was right. It was all good. “You awake?”  She didn’t answer him. She didn’t even move. After a few quiet seconds, he let his head relax back into his pillow and his hand slip back into her hair.

**_You started whispering  
This can't be happening  
Cause I don't want to lose my cool  
But was it something I said  
Or something I did  
Ooh, to spark a flame  
But it hurts to see your face  
It hurts to hear you cry  
It hurts to see the look in your eyes_ **

A couple minutes had passed, just long enough to let Puck believe that maybe Rachel really was still asleep and that her movements from before had just been a fluke, when his phone started to vibrate on the night stand. He rolled over and grabbed the phone as quickly as possible without moving his left arm. _‘Cereal in the cabinet. Ma wants to know if you and Rach are ok with Chinese for lunch.’_   He looked up from his sister’s text to the clock in the top right corner of the phone’s screen. 8:30 – just about the time his mom’s Volvo should be pulling into the temple parking lot. Well, that answered two questions then. First, his Ma was aware that his late-night visitor had turned into an early-morning guest. Secondly, they _had_ gone to temple without him. Huh.

‘ _S &s pork for me, veggie fried rice for Rach. NO MEAT NO EGGS’ _The reply took him longer to type than he was used to; that shit was hard one-handed. He set the cell phone quietly back onto the nightstand after changing the text alert to silent so that it couldn’t wake Rachel if Sarah for some reason decided to try to continue their conversation. When he rolled back onto his side so that he was again facing his companion, he noticed that she had moved again. Her chin was tucked into her chest and her face buried in the pillow.

 “No no no no no.” Rachel was whispering, and it was muffled by the pillow, but he didn’t doubt what he heard. “Oh God what did I do? What was I _thinking_? I shouldn’t be here …”

Well shit. Here he was thinkin’ he’d made progress, that even though she’d been dating Finn they were friends, _good_ friends. But apparently, just like every other time she’d found herself in his arms (although, not in his bed, this time was a first for that), Rachel had decided it was a mistake. _He_ was a mistake.

He didn’t think she knew he was awake, because she hadn’t actually said anything to him, and she was trying to slide her hand out of his. Not happening. He tightened his fingers around hers and reached his right hand out to her shoulder as she rolled farther away from him.

“Rachel.” She didn’t reply, but she stopped moving and he heard a deep sigh. “Rachel, look at me.” Puck used the hand still resting on her shoulder to roll her toward him so that his left arm ended up under her back and practically wrapped around her.

He didn’t know what to say at first. He’d never seen Rachel like that before. He knew she cried. Everybody knew she cried. More than once he’d watched her stomp away from Finn toward the girls’ bathroom biting her lip. They’d all witnessed her disappearing act after the top 10 list was posted at Nationals the previous year, and they didn’t miss how her eyes were just a little redder than usual when she finally returned. But as far as he knew, no one, besides maybe Kurt, had ever actually seen her cry. The sight broke Puck’s heart, and at that moment, he didn’t even care if that made him sound like a pussy, because while she might regret him, he didn’t regret her – even if, for him, ‘her’ was just friend, just a girl who talked to him and actually listened when he had something to say. Her cheeks were tear-stained and her chin still quivered a little bit, but it was her eyes that really did him in. They were just so dull, lifeless almost, and so not Rachel.

**_Cause it's a beautiful day  
It's a beautiful sunrise  
But I don’t want to see you cry  
But I can take away your pain  
The feeling’s just the same  
But I can't stand to see you cry_ **

Puck finally detangled his left hand from hers and curled it up to wipe a stray tear from Rachel’s cheek and brush her bangs off her forehead. He then slid his arm out from under her shoulders and used it to prop himself up and look down on her, keeping his other hand firmly on her shoulder in case she tried to take off again. They needed to have a serious talk before she went anywhere. “Look, Rachel, I don’t know exactly what you think might have happened,” he let his fingertips rub gentle, soothing circles over the exposed skin of her collarbone. “But I swear, I didn’t do nothin’. _We_ didn’t do nothin’. I mean, I don’t even know why I’m tellin’ you this, ‘cause it’s not like I got you drunk or whatever, so if we had’a done somethin’ you’d remember. Anyway,” he shook his head to clear his mind and get himself back on track, “other than the vice grip _you_ had on _my_ hand, I didn’t touch you all night, I swear Rachel. I was asleep 30 seconds after you stopped cryin’ and I was sure you were finally asleep. And as for this mornin’, well, I been awake five minutes and you been awake three, so you do the math.” Puck cleared his throat when Rachel continued to stare up at the ceiling and refused to so much as look his way. “Point is, I guess, whatever you’re freakin’ out about, you can stop, k?”

“Noah,” she spoke without looking at him. “I, I have to go.” She moved to push herself up on her elbows, and Puck slid his hand off her shoulder and down her arm to wrap his fingers around her forearm.

“No you don’t. And you’re not.”

“Noah,” he knew the sigh she let out was supposed to sound exasperated, but the way her breath shuddered only sounded broken. “My dads -,”

“Know you’re here. I mean, my Ma knows, which means there’s no way they don’t know. And if there were any issues, they’da called by now.” His fingers trailed up and down the inside of her arm.

“And Finn-,”

“Broke up with you.” He flinched when he heard her gasp, followed by a long, ragged breath. “I’m sorry Rach.” He pushed himself up so that he was half-sitting with his back against the headboard and pulled Rachel onto him until her head fell on his bare stomach ( _What? He’d already given up half his bed for her, he didn’t see why he needed to change any more of his sleeping habits just ‘cause she was there_.) and her legs tangled with his. His right hand found her left one and the other smoothed her hair over her shoulder and down her back. “I don’t wanna upset you, and I’m not tryin’a be a dick, really. I just wanna be your friend. Okay?” he couldn’t stand to look at her the way she was right then, but he felt her head nod against him. “But that means I’m only ever gonna be honest with you, even when it sucks.”

Rachel choked a little, and he knew she was probably crying again, or trying not to, but she snaked her free hand behind his back and used it to grip onto his side, pulling herself closer to him. “I don’t know why …” He looked down at her when she spoke, her voice still a little shaky, but almost clear, “I mean, I knew there was an expiration date, but -,”

“It still sucks.”

She nodded. “And I just didn’t expect-,”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that Rach. I know.” Almost unconsciously, he rubbed his hand up and down her back as he spoke, and he squeezed her hand tighter in his, letting his thumb run over her knuckles. “Wanna know the good news, though?” She hummed into his stomach. “This,” he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her tight against him, “this friendship _thing_ we’ve got, there’s no expiration date on that.”

**_The list goes on and on  
There's never enough  
But who is when and when is where  
We've been there it's tough  
But if I've come too far  
It's not far enough  
We'll get there just take your time, realize  
You believe in me_ **

“So like, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, ‘cause it’s cool havin’ you around and I’m glad you’re here or whatever, but why _are_ you here?”

Rachel looked up at him as if he’d just asked why the sky is blue or why she loved Barbra Streisand. “I … well, I thought that was obvious.” She seemed to think that answered everything, but he only looked back at her blankly. “I was sad. And lonely.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Puck looked down at her squirming in his lap. He wasn’t sure if she really didn’t get it, or if she just didn’t want to. Either way, he was going to hold her to an answer.

“Of course it does. That’s why I’m here.”

“No, that’s why you’re not at home. But that doesn’t explain why you’re _here_.” She looked confused as she stared back up at him. “Rach, you could’ve gone anywhere. I mean, I know Kurt’s your _best_ friend, and I get why you didn’t want to go to him, but you still had lots of other options. You have other friends now Rachel, good ones. I’m pretty sure even Santana would have been there for you on this one. Hell, Evans lives with you. If you really just wanted an ear to bend, all you had to do was go down the hall. So, why’d you come here? Why me?”

“I … I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would be a problem.” Rachel’s voice shuddered and she hid her face from him as she tried to push herself off of Puck, but he only tightened his grip around her waist.

Puck didn’t know why she insisted on believing that she was like, a burden, or whatever. So yeah, they’d had a rough start, with the slushees and all that other stupid shit he gave up on a couple years ago, but that was in the past. He had told her that he was glad she was there, and he meant it. “Don’t start that shit. I already told you it’s not a problem. I like havin’ you around, as much as you try to convince yourself otherwise, and I’m glad you came to me. I just want you to tell me why you did.” See, the thing was, he didn’t so much want to know why she came to him – he was pretty sure he already knew – as he wanted to hear her say it.

Rachel stopped to think about that. She stared up at his face, studying each feature almost meticulously, and ran the fingers of her right hand, which was still hooked behind his back, randomly over the sensitive skin on his hip. “I … well … you were just the first person I thought of. Finn was telling me that since I’m going to New York and he’s staying here, which we both already knew, he didn’t see the point in wasting any more time with me when he could be moving on to someone he could actually have a future with.” Puck slid his fingers through her hair again and nodded, he’d already heard the long version of all that. “And the whole time my heart was breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, because while all that was true, I never thought he would ever consider me – us – a waste of time, all I could think about was how I wanted to see your face and feel you hold me and run your hands through my hair, like you did when you were the only one who showed up at my dance recital. Like that,” he stilled the movement of his hand for half a second before laughing and continuing the soothing motion. “I wanted to hear you tell me that, even if we stopped being friends today, you wouldn’t consider me a waste of time. I just felt like I needed to be with you. I don’t really know why.”

“I do.” Puck’s left arm stopped moving and draped over her back, and he pulled his other hand from hers and dropped it softly across her shoulders, his fingers tugging up the sleeve of his t-shirt and tracing over her arm. “Because first of all, I wouldn’t ever say you’re a waste of time, although you can give it up with that shit about ‘if we stopped being friends today,’ ‘cause I already told you, there’s no expiration date on us. Secondly, Rach, do you realize you’re the only person who’s ever believed in me?” She stared wide-eyed up at him. “Seriously. Sometimes, like now, I don’t think even you realize how much faith you have in me. Like, you’re on my ass all the time, but even when you’re yellin’ at me over somethin’ stupid I did, ya never treat me like _I’m_ stupid. Just the _way_ you push me to be better proves that you believe I can be, and that’s freakin’ awesome. So you might not think you know why you came here, but really, it was ‘cause all that stuff you wanted, everything you needed when Finn was makin’ you feel like shit, somewhere in there,” he lifted his hand from her shoulder and tapped the top of her head, “between Barbra and your Tony speech and the set list you probably already got lined up for Nationals, you knew you’d get it from me.”

**_Cause it's a beautiful day  
It's a beautiful sunrise  
And I can't stand to see you cry  
But I can take away your pain  
The feelings just the same yea  
Well I can't stand to see you cry_ **

“Okay then Noah, why are _you_ here?” Neither of them had moved for several minutes, Rachel content to let Puck comfort her the only way he knew how – physically, with his hands running over her body in the least dirty way he knew how – and Puck content just to provide that comfort. Finally, she pushed herself up a little so that she was sitting next to him with one of his arms around her shoulders and the other resting on her mid-thigh, her head landing on his chest now instead of his stomach.

“Hate to break it to ya babe,” he chuckled, “but this is _my_ bed. In _my_ room. In _my_ house. I’m kinda sposed to be here.”

“Maybe,” Rachel shrugged, “but I’m not _supposed_ to be here. You would have fulfilled your duties as a friend just by lending me a sympathetic ear then sending me on my way. You would have been a _great_ friend if you had lent me that ear and a shoulder to cry on then offered me your couch. But you did so much more. Noah, you listened to me vent and scream, and you held me while I cried, then you shared your bed with me, even though I know for a fact that I slept on your arm all night and the pins and needles didn’t go away until just a few minutes ago.”

Puck pulled her away from his body by her shoulder and tilted his head down to stare – almost glare – at her, “How the hell did you -,”

“Your hand twitched every time you touched me,” she giggled. “It finally stopped just a little bit ago.”

“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes and pulled her almost roughly back against him. He didn’t want her to see him smiling – grinning because the tiny girl who had somehow wormed her way into his life knew him _that_ well was so not badass. “So, you mean to tell me that all I really had to do was sit here and pretend to listen for a while, then I coulda sent you home and had my bed all to myself?” Puck’s head fell back against the wall and he smirked to himself. Come on, Rachel might have showed up to see ‘Noah’ and not ‘Puck,’ but even she couldn’t expect Puck to stay completely gone for this long. Besides, it was fun to play with her a little. ( _Yeah, that sounds dirty, it’s not. Get over it._ )

“Lovely Noah, really.” Rachel swatted his stomach and laughed when he feigned actual pain, grunting and doubling over slightly. He knew that it didn’t really matter what he said; somewhere in the back of her mind (probably tucked away with all that other stuff he had just pointed out) she knew that the thought of sending her home had never crossed his mind. “But really,” she looked up at him earnestly, “I told you – well, you told me – why I came here. Very accurately, I might add, so now I want you to tell me why you put up with me and let me stay here.”

“Seriously? I really have to explain this to you?”

“Well, yes. I want to know.”

“Geez woman, I know why you really get up so early, and it has nothing to do with that damn elliptical takin’ up space in the corner of your bedroom.” Puck only shook his head when Rachel looked back at him, confused. “It’s ‘cause your brain don’t start workin’ ‘till you been up for,” he reached over to the night stand and turned the alarm clock toward the bed, “well, more than 30 minutes, at least.” She huffed and tried to push herself away from him, but he only held her tighter against him. “I’m sorry, I’m not bein’ mean babe, I’m just … bein’ me I guess. Just playin’ with ya.” Rachel seemed hesitant, but gave in after a few seconds and let her body relax back against his when he rubbed his hand gently over her leg. “Ya know all that stuff I said before, all the reasons why you showed up here instead ‘a goin’ to anybody else?” Her head nodded against his chest. “Well, those are all the same reasons why I’m here.”

**_But it's a beautiful day  
It's a beautiful sunrise  
Oh I just want to see you smile  
Cause I can take away your pain  
The feelings just the same  
Yea, I just want to see you smile_ **

Two and a half hours later, Puck was convinced that Rachel was asleep again. It really wouldn’t surprise him; she had been drained when she showed up at his house the previous night, and he didn’t imagine she had slept well, for a few reasons. Besides, she hadn’t made a sound since she questioned (or, ya know, _harassed_ ) him about his decision to turn on the XBox and scroll through the Netflix selections to find the 1980s animated Spiderman series. ( _“Saturday mornin’ means cartoons, Rach, and the ones on tv now suck.”_ ) In his experience, she almost _had_ to be asleep to be that quiet. So, when she actually did speak up, it startled him a little.

“You know, this Mary Jane girl is really quite frustrating.” Puck tilted his head down to look at her, and though her head was still facing directly forward, he could see traces of the glare she was sending the television. “I mean, Peter is her best friend, and he’s always there when she needs him, and it’s so clear to everyone that he’s completely in love with her, but she’s just so oblivious that she goes on relegating him to that role of friend when it is painfully obvious that he wants more. And really, what does she think, that she could do better somehow? Even without all his super-spidey powers -,”

_Did Rachel Berry just say ‘super-spidey powers?’ Fucking epic._

“- she could never find anyone better than the man who has stood by her no matter what.” She huffed one last time and nuzzled closer to him, wrapping her arm securely around his waist and dropping her hand to clutch the elastic waistband of his pajama pants.

Puck tried, really, to hold back the snort that came out. He knew that the last thing she needed was to feel like he was making fun of her. But seriously? Did she really just say that? English wasn’t his best subject, but he was pretty sure this whole set-up was a textbook example of irony. Or symbolism. Or some shit like that …

_‘And we gon’ make you lose your mind …’_

Well that shit came out of nowhere. They both jumped when Puck’s phone started to ring.

“Honestly Noah!” Rachel was chastising him, but he couldn’t even reach for the damn phone because he was laughing so hard. That ringtone was seriously one of the best decisions he’d ever made.

_‘We just wanna see ya … ‘_

“I _knew_ I should never have let you talk me into giving you details.” He only continued to laugh even as she slapped half-heartedly at his hip. Whatever, she wasn’t _really_ mad.

_‘Shake that …’_

 “C’mon Rach, ya found him in Kentucky, dancin’ for dollar bills from middle aged women, goin’ by the name ‘a ‘White Chocolate.’ Evans should be _thankin’_ me that all I did was change his ringtone.”

_‘Everyday I’m shufflin’ …’_

She sat up and reached over him to grab the phone off the night stand and shove it into his chest. “Just answer the phone, Noah.” She settled back into his side after he took the phone from her, and he was pretty sure she could have accomplished all that without actually jamming her pointy little elbow into his stomach.

“’Sup man? … Yeah, dude, sounds awesome. You know I’m always down for kickin’ your ass in paintball. When? … Oh, no man, today’s out, I’m busy. Sorry,” he glanced down at Rachel, but if she was paying any attention to his conversation, she didn’t let on. “Yeah. Later.” He ended the call, but before he even got the phone back onto the nightstand, the screen was flashing with an incoming text message.

 _‘take care of her – it was bad’_ Puck was glad to know that at least one other person besides himself was looking out for Rachel (although why Evans couldn’t just have said, “Hey, is Rach over there?” he didn’t understand). It also helped to know that the person she shared a roof with was on her side, just in case for some reason she couldn’t come running to his door the next time she needed comforting – and he didn’t doubt there would be a next time; she felt too much for this to be the end of it. He just chose to ignore the feeling of jealousy and anger that coiled in the pit of his stomach when he couldn’t help but picture her curled up watching 30-year-old cartoons in _Sam’s_ bed, _Sam’s_ hand rubbing lazy circles over her back as she clung to the blonde.

The episode ended and the credits began to roll as Puck typed a quick, _‘I will’_ back to Sam and set the phone back on the nightstand. Rachel stretched against him and pushed herself up so that her head reached his shoulder.

“I suppose I should be going now. I’ve intruded on you enough, and now your mother and sister will be home soon.” Yet, she made no move to get out of the bed and punctuated the statement with a long sigh.

“Don’t be stupid.” That earned him a gasp and an indignant little shriek. “They’ll be pissed if you’re not here when they get home.” Puck chuckled, “They’re even bringin’ ya lunch. Veggie fried rice – I know that’s your favorite.” He studied the television and focused on fighting down the blush creeping from his ears down to his neck.

“You’re amazing, Noah.” She spoke into his shoulder and her voice shuddered a little. “Really, I can’t … I can’t imagine what I would do without you.”

“’S no problem Rach,” he shrugged, shooting for nonchalance. “What are friends for, right?”

And then he meant to kiss her forehead, really. She was just over 12 hours out of the most serious relationship either of them had ever been in, and although the break-up itself wasn’t exactly a shock – it was expected, really – the way it happened was devastating. Rachel was heartbroken, and the last thing he wanted to do was make that worse by making her think that the one person she chose to come to for comfort and friendship was hitting on her, or worse, trying to take advantage of her. But just like a moment out of one of those stupid romantic comedies he stillmaintained made you grow a vagina if you watched all the way through, the moment he turned to press his lips onto her forehead was the same second that she chose to turn her own face up to look at him. And, as if by some magnetic pull, his lips landed not on her forehead or her nose or even her cheek, but squarely on her mouth.

The kiss remained nothing more than a tender press of lips against lips. Rachel’s mouth didn’t open for him, and his tongue didn’t meet her lips to request entrance. Even so, Puck’s eyes _did_ fall closed as soon as he felt her soft lips against his, and his arm, which had been slung casually over her shoulders, tightened around her and pulled her body flush against his. Just before pulling away from the kiss, he sucked her bottom lip gently between his own, just enough to make sure she felt _something_. But as quickly as he had initiated the action, he ended it, pecking at her lips once more then backing away from her. He let his hand rise to run over her hair, then, without a word, he turned and stood off the bed. “C’mon,” he grabbed a t-shirt off the video gaming chair in the corner of the room then turned back to face his guest, who sat, looking dumbfounded, right where he had left her. “Like you said, Ma and Sarah will be home soon. Guess we should at least go set the table or somethin’.”

“Right.” Rachel looked down at her hands in her lap before getting out of the bed and taking Puck’s outstretched hand at the door.

“Noah,” she stopped them after taking only two steps into the hall. “What does this mean? I mean, what … what are we?”

“We’re best friends, Rach.” He squeezed her hand, “It means we’re two, _single,_ best friends, who are going to keep being exactly that for the next few months. And then, we’re both going to New York.”

**_The list goes on and on_ **


End file.
